New, not previously published. This is a brand-spanking new BLOGPOST!This is not a retread or rehash. This is all shiny an’ new. For reals.
In regard to my months-long self absorption I realize I’ve been dreadfully negligent. Shame on me. But, I’m reunited with my baby now, the band is back together and we’re about to tear up the casino circuit until a new record deal is on the table. Here goes…
***
In my early days I’d made a few comments in regard to how I felt about satisfying prurience and appeasing morbid curiosity. If memory serves, I was a bit haughty when it came to such gratification. On this, my “second incarnation,” I’ve decided to eschew all semblance of moral integrity and get right down to serving the lowest common denominator in whatever way I can. Gotta knock the rust off somehow.
Destiny. Kismet. Karma. All strong, powerful words in and of themselves. In some individuals, they carry deep connotations in how they view their place in the universe. Outside of the obvious– i.e. I decide to give mugging passersby a try as a part-time job and end up getting shot in the face– I don’t give them much credence when it comes to cause and effect in regard to meeting one’s maker. No “butterfly effect” in my view of the Cosmos. I would be a liar, however, if I were to say I’ve never borne witness to a few tragic events that one could ascribe “destiny,” “kismet,” or “karma” powerful roles in the chain of events that sent some poor soul to the Other Side. Here goes.
“Don’t dare God:” I was summoned to a death scene which involved traumatic injury incurred in the performance of service to humanity. It happened in a small, rented warehouse from which a church operated a busy food-shelf. Every aspect of its operation was based in donations. The food, pallets and bags were provided gratis by congregants and local businesses. Congregants also were generous in providing time and specialized skills to the cause.
This charity had benefited from the donation of a pair of forklifts, provided gratis by a shipping company. These labor saving implements were not in “fresh-off-the-assembly-line” condition. They’d seen many hours of hard service and were in need of a little fixin’ up. No problem. One of the church members was an industrial mechanic. Tuning up such equipment was right in his wheelhouse.
This warehouse was just a barebones grocery store. It didn’t have a machine shop. There were no industrial hoists or grease monkey pits to facilitate the repair and maintenance of contraptions like a forklift. One of the lifts– per the pastor– had some sort of problem “underneath it.” Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and the mechanically oriented congregant was a “can do” sorta guy. He came up with a plan. The other forklift had been deemed mechanically sound in all regards. There was nothing wrong underneath that one. The solution to access the “underneath” of the problematic machine was to utilize the operational forklift as a hoist. The forks were slipped under the counterweight at the rear of the defective one and raised about two feet from the floor. The forks of the malfunctioning machine were fully operational. They were raised to the same height, and a stack of sawn off railroad ties were placed underneath them. Those forks were then lowered until the implement was a level twenty-four inches from the floor. Its normal ground clearance was about three inches.
The congregant found this a sound solution, and took no further steps in terms of safety or common sense. The pastor, who was present, thought otherwise and voiced his concerns. The philanthropic congregant disagreed. “I told him I wasn’t comfortable with him crawling under there without further blocking the forklift,” the undertandably stunned reverend related to me. “‘We’re doing God’s work here, pastor,’ he said. ‘I’ll let Him worry about it.’ Then he slid under it with a flashlight.”
The “good” forklift had been more than adequate when used to move a pallet laden with potatoes and such. Supporting over a ton and a half of steel well exceeded this function. The hydraulic hoses used to raise and lower its forks weren’t up to the job. The pastor reported that the man had just finished asserting his faith in the Lord and slid under the machine when one of the hoses blew, showering the entire area with hydraulic fluid. The forks dropped and so did the load it was bearing. The railroad ties supporting the front end of the damaged forlift, in reaction to the sudden change of angle and pressure, shot out from beneath the forks they were supporting. In less than a second the implement was resting on its wheels, as well as the congregant’s head and shoulders. I mentioned its ground clearance was three inches, did I not?
***
“It’s the clothes that make the man:” I went out to pick up a middle aged fellow who’d taken a headlong tumble down the steps leading to his basement. Throughout the day, he’d been hard at work, emptying several canned twelve ounce beverages from the refrigerator in his kitchen. This had been his normal Saturday routine for over twenty years. His wife told me it’d been at least a twelve pack. When the kitchen supply had run out he was still thirsty, so he headed downstairs to tap into the reserve supply. His wife had been in the living room watching television when she heard the basement door open. An instant later she heard a terrible noise that she correctly interpreted as her husband bouncing down the steps.
When I arrived he was still at the bottom of the stairway. The medics had been there and left, of course. They reported to the cop who’d called it in to us that, when they arrived, the man’s shoulders were flush with the wall opposite the bottom step. His head was folded tight to his chest. When they rolled him to his back they reported his head was “kinda floppy.” They put the heart monitor pads on, saw the telemetry, and called it quits right then and there. So, I did my part, took my pictures, talked to the cop, spoke with the wife. It was as we were putting him into the body bag before hauling him back upstairs that I took a moment to read what was on the front of his T-shirt. Emblazoned over an artistic rendition of a brimming mug was printed: “There’s no such thing as a fatal beer!”
***
“If you read it somewhere, it must be true:” I got a call from an outstate county we serve as Medical Examiner. The deputy reported they’d be sending the young victim of a truly spectacular traffic accident. This young man had enjoyed a meal at the local Chinese restaurant with some friends– the last people who saw him alive. He was rushing through his dinner, explaining he was going to a party after eating and there would be a certain lady attending he’d been dying to “have a crack at.” He did stick around long enough for a fortune cookie, and these friends reported he tucked the little strip of paper into his wallet before heading out to test his luck in love.
It was a late autumn/early winter night. It had been dark over an hour before this lad left the restaurant. His route to the party covered several miles of county roads. A freezing drizzle had just begun to fall. About halfway to the party his shot at getting laid was foiled forever. The deputy reported his estimated speed at the point of the crash was at least twenty miles an hour in excess of the posted speed, which was fifty MPH. It was on a long, left breaking curve. The curve grew tighter as the roadway progressed. The deputy further reported this road bordered a ditch, sizable both in depth and width. About a quarter mile before the road straightened out, the young man lost control of his vehicle (a pickup truck) and slammed into the massive, ultra heavy duty guardrail that protected this ditch from guys like him. The deputy added that this stretch of road and that ditch had a long, long history of gobbling up vehicles. The cost of removing those vehicles and their occupants was substantial. To prevent this type of cost, this whopper of a guardrail was put up three years prior and had paid for itself several times over. On this occasion, however, this stalwart line of defense had proved itself only partially insurmountable. The truck remained on the pavement. The driver did not remain in the cab. He was unbelted (regard for personal safety is ever the casualty of eager anticipation,) and the impact launched him straight through the windshield. He was recovered from the other side of the ditch, twelve feet off the ground and in the branches of a tree. Impressive.
When he arrived at our Office, he was routinely processed, just like everybody who shows up that doesn’t die under suspicious circumstances. In the course of this, his wallet was emptied and the contents were sorted and documented. Tucked in with his legal tender, a small strip of paper was discovered. It was the contents of the fortune cookie that had topped off his last meal. It read: “You will soon take a short but exciting journey to a peaceful place.”
Well, then…